Autonomy

Contents

Part I - 2035-2042

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2042 - 1

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Part II - 2056

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Part III - 2058

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Part IV - 2060

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Acknowledgements

A Selection of Other Titles from Kristell Ink

Autonomy

Jude Houghton

www.kristell-ink.com

Copyright © 2015 Jude Houghton

Jude Houghton asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-909845-96-1

Hardback ISBN 978-1-909845-480

EPUB ISBN 978-0-9935766-9-0

Cover art by Ken Dawson

Cover design by Ken Dawson

Typesetting by Book Polishers

Kristell Ink

An Imprint of Grimbold Books

4 Woodhall Drive

Banbury Oxon OX1 69Y

United Kingdom

www.kristell-ink.com

For my family

Welcome to your future . . .

PART I

2035-2042

1

Sector 2, Churin

Li Bao felt a pop between her legs followed by wetness. It was her fourth child, about to nose its way into the world. Silently cursing, she glanced across the Battery floor. A thousand pairs of hands worked in unison, but no Supervisor patrolled the lines.

Thank the Faith.

She had to get to the end of the shift. There was a bonus if they hit quota, and with the baby coming, she needed the credits. She gritted her teeth. The baby would have to wait.

The contractions came in short, agonizing bursts. Every time one peaked she had to stop, breathe and wait for the pain to pass. Twice a red warning light flashed in the corner of her viewer, telling her to speed up. The line could only move as fast as its slowest worker.

For almost ten years, Li had sat in the same seat assembling microchips. The components were something to do with iNet, but she had no idea what. Not that it mattered. Her function was to lay thirty-seven parts into the correct chip beds, each colour coded and thinner than a human hair.

The tricky part was manipulating each piece into exactly the right spot. Her iNet glasses magnified the components while her hands, enveloped in a rubbery gel, controlled robotic pincers. She didn’t know what the gel contained and she hardly ever thought about it. She thought about it now as another contraction ripped through her body.

What if the chemicals penetrated her skin and travelled down the umbilical cord to infect her baby? Her other children were fine, but Li had not been on the line as long when they were born. The air was worse now too, not inside the Battery, where it was filtered, but outside where it was not safe to walk without a respirator, every breath filled with poison.

She shook away the thought.

Do not dwell on what you cannot change.

The teaching of the Faith gave her solace. To endure hardship was part of life; a small sacrifice when compared to the eternal bliss that followed. As she laid in another component, her mind wandered to a more practical problem.

Would she be able to hold her baby?

Li had held her other children, even if she couldn’t nurse them, but recently her hands had become little better than claws, conditioned by daily shifts of at least twelve hours. She had the tell-tale folding-over of the wrist, the pincering of the fingers, the chapped red skin eroded by chemicals; what the workers called crab hands.

In the Stacks you could tell where someone worked by their particular deformity; the missing limbs of the machinists, the racking coughs and weeping eyes of the sterilization groups, the permanent hunch of the technicians and the crab hands of the assembly lines.

Her grip was poor and sometimes she dropped even the lightest loads. Perhaps it didn’t matter. Their amah would look after the child while Li worked in the Battery.

She was not angry about her hands; neither did she blame her employers. The same repetition that curled her wrists made her efficient, and that meant she was allocated to a highly productive line, one that often qualified for quota bonuses. Li could lay a batch of components in less than fifteen minutes. Only enhanced workers earned more, those who had productive surgery such as a drill gun instead of a hand, a microscope instead of an eye.

Another contraction racked her frame and Li felt the baby’s head push against her cervix. Sweat poured down her face as she struggled to keep her fingers steady. Singing under her breath, she rode the wave of pain, A Grey, B Green, C Black bean . . .

Li wanted to pull her hands from the gel and grip the desk, but that would set off an alarm. The robotic pincers shook and she almost dropped the half-completed circuit board onto the laminate workstation.

Two more red pulses flashed in the corner of her iNet glasses. She was a minute behind the line. If she lost any more time she wouldn’t be ready when the device turned over, holding up the entire batch and jeopardizing the credit bonus for everyone.

Birth water began to seep from her leg, forming a puddle beneath the workstation. It wouldn’t be long until the Battery’s sensors detected the contamination. She prayed the shift would end before that happened.

Li didn’t want to draw attention to herself. The Supervisors regularly identified strugglers to be replaced by new hands. After thirty, it was only a matter of time before the fingers became so crabbed they could no longer do the work. To that end, a thousand novices, trained and ready, came to the factory each day, filling in for temporary absences and waiting for the chance of a permanent seat. That was what kept the Battery so productive.

And the ex-line worker?

They were fortunate to be retained by the Battery at all. Some were relegated to lower grade sanitary work. Most had to be supported by their family or eke out a living as an amah; household servants, paid the price of their daily skaatch and no more. At least when Li was Retired, she could be the amah for her own home.

Li was thirty-two but she was fast, accurate, and safe for some time yet. Li had only held up the line twice in her entire career, and both times it was for just a few minutes. There was the day her brother died in a machining accident. She was distracted and couldn’t keep up with the relentless assembly. Another time she had a fever and blacked out. The Supervisor slipped her synapse and she got through the shift.

Li rushed on with her work. Her pincers manipulated a purple micro flange into an orange chip bed.

By now, the rest of the line had finished. Li could sense her co-workers peering into their iNet display, wondering why the completed device had not been cleared and replaced by the last set of color-coded pieces.

Her status icon flashed another warning and she tried not to panic. Only three more pieces to go. Just three more! The robotic pincers pressed them together. Done!

A buzzer sounded signalling the line’s completion. Compressed air shot across the device, removing any micro fibres that may have accumulated from the friction of the claws. She breathed a sigh of relief. Just thirty-seven more pieces to assemble and the shift was over.

But something was wrong. The new batch did not load.

The line opposite was already piecing together their next device; a hundred crooked backs, a hundred shoulders hunched. Her line, by contrast, was restless. Their routine broken, heads craned out of the workstations, jerking left and right like chickens.

Nobody spoke, any noise during the shift resulted in an automatic credit deduction, but Li could feel their anxiety. With every passing second, the prospect of hitting thirty thousand units for the week, and the associated bonus, became more remote.

As another contraction built, a pair of boots clicked down the aisle; the Supervisor. She tried to sit up straight for inspection, but instead creased over in agony, the contraction ripping through her. As the Supervisor reached her workstation, a groan escaped her lips.

The Supervisor spoke into his lapel. Credit deduction for S17788.

Staring down, she could see his boot, tapping up and down in her birth water. A million microbes mixed and swam under her magnified gaze. The foot suddenly pulled away, conscious of where it had been.

Disgusting, he said, and again spoke into his lapel. Row 17, request clean up and gurney. S17788 is leaving the shift.

I-I can finish.

I don’t think so, he said, impassive behind iNet shades.

There would be no bonus today, no pay for an incomplete shift and on top of that, a fine! Tears welled in her eyes. Faith give her strength! She would have to take another fourteen-hour shift tomorrow instead of staying at home with the baby.

The Supervisor did not move. He was not looking at her, but through her, reviewing data on his iNet lenses. Your last component, he said. The calibration reading shows the alignment off by nearly a degree. Sloppy. Very sloppy.

Her heart sank. A reject! The component was a reject!

The contractions had shaken her hands and she had not compensated enough. The baby was no excuse. Nearly all of the women on the line had laboured at their desk at one time or another. She had done it with Zhu and Min, checking into the triage centre at the end of the shift. With Zhu she came back to work the next day.

Her head swam. If it were a reject then . . . no, surely the Supervisor would forgive this transgression. Her record was clean, her stats outstanding.

This time when the Supervisor mumbled something into his lapel, she couldn’t hear what he said.

A clean-up team scrubbed the ground. The odour of sanitizing sprays and chemical fluids filled the air, making her nauseous. A pair of orderlies eased her into a wheelchair while a young girl in an orange jumpsuit took her seat. The entire operation took under three minutes. The Supervisor clicked off and the line began again.

Li sat in the wheelchair, helpless.

Look directly ahead, the orderly said.

Puzzled, she stared across at the far wall, past the rows of people, two thousand on this floor alone. Then she saw it. The golden circle of the retinal scan, her iNet glasses shining in on themselves; conferring her data to the Battery. The halo effect, they called it. It usually took a millisecond when iNet was registering you for something, so fast that you hardly noticed. But the halo was slower, a manual scan, for the official record. She had been Retired.

Don’t worry, the orderly said. It’s all over now.

But I-I have to work!

I’m sorry.

Please . . . call the Supervisor back, she begged.

The orderly wheeled her out.

I just need a chance to explain. It won’t happen again. I’m better than a novice, I swear I . . . She raved on until another contraction broke the hysterics and with the pain, a new fear took hold of her.

Li had counted on using the Battery’s triage unit for the birth of her baby. Retirement meant her employment ceased immediately, rendering her ineligible for medical care. She didn’t even know where the nearest hospital was. She began to hyperventilate. The-the baby! she gasped.

The orderly smiled. Don’t worry. We’ll take of that.

Wh-what?

Just relax.

A latex hand pushed a soma capsule into her mouth. As it dissolved, a sense of well-being washed through her.

Yes, of course it would be all right. The baby was pre-contracted to the Battery as an employee, collateral for Zhu’s Aspiration. The Battery had taken a sample of the amniotic sac at twenty-eight weeks to make sure the child was healthy, and then agreed to twenty-five thousand hours in return for the loan.

That feels better doesn’t it? The orderly’s voice was far away.

Li tried to nod, but her head was too heavy. The double doors of Triage opened in front of her. A dozen other mothers were in the process of giving birth, like her, caught short in the middle of their shift.

She was lifted out of the chair and onto one of the slow moving birthing stations that circumnavigated the room. There were five women in front of her, the conveyor belt powered by treadle bikes. The stations reminded her of an ancient fairground ride.

As she neared the delivery section, a nurse stepped onto the carriage and swabbed her arm. Li felt a prick and a massive dose of chemicals flooded through her. The nurse pushed a piece of rubber into her mouth. Bite on this, she said, you’re up next.

Despite the dulling effects of the soma, Li screamed as the drug forced open her birth canal, propelling the baby through. She tried to visualize beyond the pain, to meditate on the greater good that the Faith encouraged. Instead, she let out a violent torrent of obscenities, spitting the rubber onto the ground. For once, the words of the Faith were no comfort.

Two minutes later the baby lay on her breast. Li’s hands couldn’t cradle her properly, but as long as Li didn’t move, her daughter was unlikely to roll away. Around her orderlies squirted liquid in the baby’s eyes, pricked heels for blood and took a tissue sample.

Li thought it was unusual how the baby didn’t cry. All of her other children had bawled, impatient and hungry while the orderlies worked on them, registering their vitals, checking for all the things they check for. Only when the tests were complete would Li be permitted to feed her, and then within half an hour she would have to leave Triage and walk home. Her husband, who was on a shift, could not be disturbed.

We’re almost done here, the orderly said, fitting a small respirator over the baby’s mouth and nose. The air is very bad tonight, so keep it on her at all times except when feeding, even indoors.

Indoors?

That’s the new guideline. First six months indoors, out of doors, always. We want to keep Balmoral fit and healthy.

Balmoral?

Her name, Balmoral Murraine.

Confused, Li said, No, no. We’re calling her Hu. Hu Bao.

She is contracted to the Battery.

So?

The Battery allocates the name.

What?

The orderly sighed. It is in your contract. Nobody ever reads them. It’s the new policy. The Battery regulates the twelve to sixteen digit names of its pre-contracts so that each is unique. There are over forty million people currently on the Battery pay roll. Hu Bao, she typed something on her iNet keypad, would be the three hundred and fifth Hu Bao in this section alone. Balmoral Murraine is currently unique, and therefore easier for the Battery to administrate.

Only when they took the retinal scan did her baby daughter struggle. Not cry, but kick out as the yellow halo recorded the micro contours of her eye, feeding the information back into iNet. Balmoral Murraine was officially a citizen of the Autonomy.

2

Sector 1, Mansion

Dagmar Eborgersen was having a bad day, but then again almost every day was a bad day. In fact he couldn’t remember the last time he had a good day. Sometime in 2020, before the whole world went completely to shit.

So what’s your point, Guiren? he said to the empty room, his voice travelling seven thousand miles to where the Sector 2 manager stood before him in high definition.

The air quality’s reached critical levels. It’s affecting productivity. People are falling sick. Guiren himself was talking through a respirator. It made him sound even more whiny than usual.

Dagmar knew this was pure C.Y.A, Top 10’s technical term for cover your ass. If Guiren didn’t hit the annual quota it would go on his report, so Churin’s manager was building a stock of excuses. Nearly all of Sector 2 had chronic atmospheric pollution. He wasn’t special.

Dagmar pulled up an inventory. We can send you another twenty million respirators. They can be there in . . . , he typed on his holographic fingerpad, three weeks. It wouldn’t look good on Churin’s already over-extended balance sheet, but if they were desperate, they could ship them on credit.

We don’t need more respirators, Guiren rasped. The people don’t wear the ones they have. It’s the law to wear them outside, but we don’t even try to enforce it. There’s no point, not when the air in their homes is as bad as the air on the street. We’re up to 1,500 micros of PM particles per cubic meter most days. When they sleep, they’re breathing in every pollutant under the sun. Then they wake up sick. Asthma attacks, bronchitis, chronic skin complaints and . . .

There’s nothing wrong with the air in the Battery right? Dagmar said, cutting Guiren off. If your employees worked a bit longer and actually hit their numbers, maybe they’d stop falling sick. Like the old Las Vegas casinos, Top 10’s factories pumped in filtered air and oxygen twenty-four hours a day.

Dagmar was being facetious, of course, but Guiren needed to wake up. If these numbers carried on, Logistics would transfer Churin’s manager to some godforsaken hole in Sector 3, and then he’d really have something to moan about.

They’re doing eighty hours plus a week as it is, Guiren coughed. Sweat them any harder and even more will fall sick.

Dagmar thought his colleague looked pretty sick himself, drawn and thin, which was strange because the iNet vid feed, pinged off an Earth camera, usually added a few pounds.

In the corner of his iNet glasses a message came up overlaying itself on Guiren’s image. It was the hospital.

Request immediate call back.

Tapping a command on his holographic fingerpad, he told them to wait.

So what am I supposed to do about it? Dagmar said, suddenly weary.

We need an Atmos system.

Atmos? On your budget?

What difference does the budget make? It will be a sixty or seventy year mortgage irrespective of when it’s installed.

Guiren had a point. Atmos, with its promise of clean air and water for an entire region, came with a price tag that indebted the entire Sector to Top 10 for years. Even Mansion, the wealthiest sector in the Autonomy, had not yet paid off its instalments.

Talk to Finance and then I can see about adding you to the waiting list, Dagmar said.

We need it now.

You and the rest of Sector 2. We can’t conjure them out of thin air, smog filled or otherwise. If you want to be bumped up the list, try hitting your quota.

We’ll choke to death first, Guiren said.

Let’s hope not. Churin owes us too many credits. He killed the feed.

Again the hospital messaged him. One word.

Urgent.

Wait, he commanded, this time using eye control rather than the fingerpad. With another flick of the eyelid he checked his schedule. Three more Sector managers queued, all desperate to speak with him. They would have to wait too.

Removing his glasses, he ran the flat of his palm across his face. It came back covered in a clammy sheen. Was he getting sick? He didn’t have time to be sick. The biosquare reading on his iNet, the same chip that tapped into his body’s warmth and scavenged energy to power his lenses, said his temperature was normal. No, he reasoned, it was probably just the effect Guiren had on him.

He pushed back from his desk, walked over to the huge bay windows and surveyed Mansion. The sky was crystal blue; the sun glinted on ten thousand pristine skyscrapers, the air cleaner than at any time in the last two hundred years.

Halfway across the world, Churin, and a thousand industrial sectors like it, suffocated in a poisonous atmosphere. It wasn’t just the air; there were chemicals in the earth, toxins in the water and carcinogens in the ubiquitous food source known as skaatch; a gelatine composite of insects and jellyfish. Somehow, their populations struggled on; bent, grey, monotonous figures that shuffled from their stacks to the Battery and back again.

He thought again of Guiren’s pale face behind the respirator. Dagmar had been hard on the guy, but he had to be. As part of the Autonomy, Churin had obligations and its citizens’ pain was nothing compared to the starving masses that lived outside its borders, where civilization had fallen back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Churin should remember that, safely encased behind their huge Sector walls, keeping out the savages on one side, the sea on the other.

Before Top 10 designated Churin a Sector 2 region, the indigenous population died in their millions. Now they had food, water, a job and some of them; the designated Aspirants, even had a future.

However, the region could only remain viable if the Batteries turned a profit, and the only way to do that was to exploit the one commodity that was more plentiful than any other; man. In a resource-starved world, chronic over-population, instead of being the problem, had become the solution.

And this, Dagmar reflected, was the world he was bringing his children into.

He put on his iNet glasses, his face feeling curiously complete again. With an eye command, he pulled up his holographic fingerpad, the two tiny projectors in his iNet glasses creating the floating keys. He scrolled past the queued, Sector-related calls and instead selected Beth Rael. They had tried to vid him a total of seven times.

After a pause of about a second, a young doctor appeared in front of his lenses. Dagmar hadn’t seen him before.

He seemed nervous, conscious he addressed an Elite. Sir, we’ve been trying to reach you. Your wife is ready to give birth.

Yes, I see that. It’s on my schedule.

His wife had been due two hours ago. Twins. Two boys, pre-screened and pre-ordered through genetic testing of appropriate eggs and sperm. Twins, so they wouldn’t have to go through the baby thing twice. No time, not with this job, and he was over forty now. Of course, domestics would do most of the heavy lifting while they were babies, his wife sure as hell wouldn’t, but as they grew up he didn’t want to be one of those absentee fathers. If he was going to have sons, he was determined to make the investment pay off, to make time for them, somehow. Not today though. No point. They wouldn’t remember, and he had entire populations to manage, placate and make productive.

Listen, Dr . . .

Maraken, the man replied.

Right. You’re going to have to patch me in.

The young doctor looked puzzled. I don’t understand.

"Beth Rael is on Earth. I will attend in V.R. if you can make it quick."

I thought you’d want to be there in person.

"Virtual reality is being there in person. It’s just a question of media."

Not waiting for a reply, he closed the feed and tapped a command on his finger pad. A quick ret-scan gave him access to iNet’s Earth. For the Autonomy, Earth was going to be the biggest game-changer since the Faith. In its pilot phase it covered about fifteen percent of public buildings.

Where its cameras were installed, the AI could do anything from identifying non-authorized personnel to managing seating in a restaurant. For building interiors it also provided a three dimensional feed into any space, which in theory meant that needing to be somewhere in person would become a thing of the past.

Through Earth he watched the young doctor walk down the corridor, chatting to a colleague about this Elite asshole who couldn’t even make it to the birth of his own children, who had kept them waiting over two hours when they were backed up forty deliveries deep.

Dagmar nodded with satisfaction. Even though the Doctor theoretically knew what Earth was, he hadn’t processed what it meant. And that’s just what Dagmar expected. Earth’s very ubiquity, twenty-four hours a day, covering every inch of the public building, meant the software was ignored.

Asshole.

Dagmar pulled up the doctor’s record and wrote a note. As an Elite in Logistics, Dagmar could kill Maraken’s career; have him overlooked for promotions and raises, and he wouldn’t even know why. With just three taps on the keypad he could transfer him out of Mansion and into a Battery triage unit, working sixteen to twenty hours a day in Sector 2. Churin needed doctors.

His fingers hovered over the send command, but after hesitating a moment, he deleted the note and closed the record. He’d let it go. This man was going to deliver his children, after all.

Navigating Earth’s feed list, Dagmar transferred his view to his wife’s ward. Esther lay in three-dimensional high definition, supine and motionless except for the occasional twitch or curl.

Even though he had used the prototype several times, the Earth technology still awed him. She was so vivid, he felt like he could reach out and actually touch her, and all of this projected onto his iNet lenses, an inch in front of his eyes.

Behind her own iNet glasses, Dagmar knew his wife would be in one of the interactive simulations that she was so fond of, doubtlessly being wooed by some tall, dark stranger. He knew the type she liked, all muscles and grease. He shouldn’t have access to her Media file, but for an Elite, the usual rules didn’t apply.

The doctor roused his wife gently, bringing her out of the sim before the birth. He removed her iNet glasses and Dagmar realised it was the first time he had seen her eyes for a month. They looked darker somehow; bruised, rather than bright blue.

Open please, Doctor Maraken said and popped a couple of Mandrian into her mouth. His iNet told him the drug was a very expensive total body anesthetic, but with a targeted action so that it bypassed the infants’ metabolisms. The doctor had probably been topping her up with the stuff for the last three hours.

Two nurses entered the room. Maraken checked a monitor, pulled a respirator over his mouth and put on a pair of latex gloves. He made a laser thin incision across her abdomen and pulled out one baby and then the next, together with the twin placenta. Immediately a nurse sprayed an organic adhesive across his wife’s abdomen, and the incision resealed.

The doctor offered Esther the twins to hold, but she waved them away, asking for them to be cleaned off first. As she waited, his wife pulled down her iNet glasses and jacked back into her simulation.

Some technology worked too well.

Dagmar flicked an eyelid and logged out of Earth.

Before returning to his meetings, Dagmar replayed the image of his sons. He tried to feel something towards the red folded mess in front of his eyes, one slight and skinny and fair, the other chunkier and darker, but for now they looked like alien interlopers, something he instinctively wanted to reject.

Juggling the lives of millions had left him desensitized, but still, it depressed him that this non-reaction should be his response. He understood enough about biology to know that by the time he got home, these images, imprinted on his brain would already be tricking his body into producing the necessary chemicals to want to protect and love his offspring. He knew that in time he would become irrationally sentimental about them. He had big plans for his children, after all.

3

Sector 2, Churin

Discharged from Triage between shifts, there were no trams running to the Stacks so Li hobbled four miles home with the baby strapped to her chest in a Battery-issued sling. It was cold and Li could see her breath, despite the heavy smog. She was lightheaded and groggy from the birth accelerating drugs.

As she walked through the streets the rusty trailers, riveted together and stacked twenty high, yawned down upon her. Several times she had to avoid the waste that came gushing through the dunny holes above. You could never quite avoid it, some of it always got on your feet, your clothes and if you were unlucky, your head. The narrow streets were awash with litter and filth, each building only a few inches from the next. Li held Balmoral tight to her chest, shielding her.

She struggled up the six flights of rickety stairs welded to the outside of her stack. Only as she fumbled for the key, did she notice that the baby’s face was purple and that the respirator had slipped from her face. She smacked the child’s bottom, but instead of crying, the baby’s lips tightened further. Panicking, Li banged on the door of the trailer.

Tai-Tai! she screamed. Tai-Tai!

Inside, she heard a curse and a painfully slow shuffle of steps. The old woman opened the door. What is it? Why don’t you use your key?

The baby!

The amah looked at the child’s face and quickly pulled Balmoral from the sling. Tai-Tai hurried to the sink and reached for the large clay jug. As she poured water over the baby’s blackening face, Balmoral jumped as though slapped. She let out a silent, slow motion scream before gulping in mouthfuls of air in a torrent of tears.

T-Thank you, Li stuttered.

Tai-Tai clicked her tongue in disapproval and rocked the baby back and forth, soothing her.

You need to put this on, Li said handing her the respirator.

She doesn’t want that.

They said to put it on, even indoors.

She’ll be all right.

But she couldn’t breathe a moment ago!

Tai-Tai muttered something Li couldn’t hear, and continued to rock Balmoral.

Li chewed her lip and put the respirator on the table. Her husband said it was just a piece of cloth with a gauze filter anyway. It didn’t actually stop the pollutants; just broke them up a bit. None of her other children had bothered with one.

Sit, Tai-Tai said. Did they give you formula?

Li nodded.

Then I will change her and when I’m done, you can feed her.

But I fed her a couple of hours ago.

She’ll be hungry again. Now sit.

Li lowered herself onto the chair, wincing as the stitches pulled. The drugs had begun to wear off and she was in pain. It would be worse in a couple of hours.

The amah removed the baby’s blanket, the thin plastic undergarment and the soaking cloth underneath. She placed the cloth in the sink, rinsed the plastic briefs, took another piece of cloth from the pile of four or five she had laid ready, replaced the briefs and wrapped Balmoral in three quick folds. She swaddled the child back up using the Battery’s blanket.

The old woman’s proficiency reminded Li that she knew almost nothing about being a mother. It hadn’t mattered before. Tai-Tai looked after the children while she worked in the Battery. But tomorrow there would be no Tai-Tai.

She handed the child to Li, and then returned to the sink to wash the soiled cloth. Li leaned back and balanced Balmoral across her chest to compensate for her lack of grip. She had six bottles of synthetic milk, given to her by the orderlies, to tide her over until she installed the baby at Mamfac. The formula was not supposed to be used for more than a couple of days. It provided the necessary calories, but not the nutrition, and babies could become addicted to its thick creamy nothingness.

Li wondered if she should use the formula at all. Mamfac was twenty-four hours and the nearest station was only ten minutes or so down the street. Tai-Tai could take her when she had finished with the cloths.

What was she thinking?

She had been Retired. They couldn’t afford Mamfac. Until the baby was old enough to digest pureed skaatch, Li would nurse the child herself.

How was it done?

Li hadn’t fed any of the others, or even seen them fed. Self-consciously she slid her shirt open, and nudged the child’s head towards her breast. The child rooted towards the nipple, but with Li’s hands and inexperience, she couldn’t connect. The baby began to cry. Tai-Tai turned from the sink, and Li became conscious of her puzzled stare.

What’s wrong with the formula?

Li said nothing, but reddening with shame, closed her shirt. Sensing Li had given up, the baby began to howl. Zhu and Min, her two younger children, who had slept through the drama of their sister’s return home, now sat up on their mattress, eyes blinking. They wanted to see their new sibling. Tai-Tai flapped them away before they got too near, telling them to give the baby space.

Why is she crying? Min said.

She’s hungry, Li said. Pass me one of the bottles from my satchel.

She looks sick, Min said.

With Min holding the bottle and Li balancing, Li tried to feed her, but now the child wouldn’t eat. Then she wouldn’t sleep. Then she developed a raging fever.

Tai-Tai assumed charge. She sent Min to collect ice from the central station for a cold compress. She put Zhu back to bed. She calmed the baby with gentle rocking while singing hoarsely under her breath. She made tea for Li, who herself was ill, nauseous with the come down of the drugs, in pain from the birth, and now frantic with worry.

Lie down, Tai-Tai said. It does the child no good to have you fretting around her. This will pass. She’s just getting used to the air.

Just getting used to the air.

It was the refrain of all those who lived in Churin’s stacks. It was the reason for any childhood ailment, ranging from bronchitis, to sores on the skin, to the sudden death of a child.

Last year, their neighbours from the fourth trailer lost a little boy after he developed respiratory problems three weeks after birth. He hadn’t got used to the air. Or the fact they had almost no food, or that the family of twelve existed in a single, squalid room with no heat or water or access to a dunny hole.

Tai-Tai was right; all they could do was wait. No doctor would come out on call to the Stacks and a journey back to Triage might finish the child off.

Helpless, Li found herself logging into the Faith. Behind her iNet glasses the room, her family, even Balmoral, all faded into the background as the sounds and sensory experience of the Faith calmed her.

Li’s spiritual avatar appeared; a white robed spirit who looked like her mother when Li was a child. Li prayed behind the iNet glasses, meditating on the images. If the Faith let her child live, she would double her devotions. She would find time, somehow.

In the early hours of morning, the fever broke and the little scrap revived, drinking two bottles of formula before finally falling asleep. Tai-Tai laid her gently in the old baking tray that served as a cot. There was barely room for her on the floor. As it was the six of them couldn’t sleep at the same time; there was not enough space. At least they had their own trailer. Most trailers were a little bigger than their four hundred square feet but typically they contained more than one family.

Sitting over her, Li watched the rising and falling of her tiny chest. Min and Tai-Tai settled down to doze for the hour left before day-break. Li was exhausted too, but with the immediate crisis over, she fretted about their sudden change in economic fortunes.

Retired.

The word grew in her mind like a tumour.

How would they make ends meet?

Li could apply for low grade work at the Battery; hauling waste to the pits and cleaning the latrines. The pay would be less, but it would keep the family whole. She reached for her iNet glasses to check for vacancies and stopped, arrested by the sight of her curled fingers feebly grasping the black plastic frames. Her crab hands, conditioned for the construction of microchips, were unfit for manual labour. The Battery’s unskilled jobs were over-subscribed and, with so much choice, the company employed workers whose repetitive injuries did not diminish their physical utility. Li could hardly manipulate a mop or pick up a waste bag. She didn’t have a hope.

Sleep, missy, Tai-Tai muttered, regarding her with a half-open eye. Like the ducks Li’s father used to keep a lifetime ago, Tai-Tai always had one eye open, surveying the horizon for danger, resting one half of her brain at a time.

I will, I will, Li whispered back, more awake than ever.

Tai-Tai had been with them since their eldest daughter Fen was born, fourteen years ago. For little more than the price of her skaatch and a mattress in the corner of their trailer, Tai-Tai raised the children, cooked, cleaned and collected the daily water from two miles away.

Sleep, Tai-Tai murmured again.

The amah would have to go, the first casualty of Li’s unemployment. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Over the last couple of years she had become irritable and insolent; complaining that Li spoilt Zhu, that she ignored her other children, that she thought too much of the Faith and too little of her husband. Easy for Tai-Tai to say. She wasn’t the one juggling a fourteen-hour shift on the assembly line with being the patient, loving mother.

Li’s stomach squirmed. It was no good. Li couldn’t work herself up to be angry with their amah. She had been part of the family for too long and today Li would have to dismiss her.

Li feared for the old woman’s prospects. Tai-Tai was half blind and almost seventy; ancient for Sector 2 where many didn’t see their fiftieth year. She was part of a generation that never really grasped iNet. Tai-Tai had the standard issue glasses but never wore them, claiming they gave her migraines. Outside of the trailer, Tai-Tai often became confused. Even her command of English, the Autonomy’s official language, was patchy. She would struggle to find another position, no matter how meagre the reward. Still, Li had to tell her, and the sooner the better. They couldn’t afford to keep her another day.

Faith give her strength.

Li struggled to her feet and walked over to Tai-Tai’s mattress. Tai-Tai, she said softly.

The old woman didn’t stir. She could talk in her sleep, but not, it seemed, listen.

Tai-Tai. Li bent down and shook her shoulder.

What is it? she croaked.

I have to talk to you.

What is it? Is the baby sick again?

No.

Then what? I need to sleep.

"Tai-Tai I have . . . I have been Retired."

Careless, Tai-Tai said irritably, and turned away from Li, pulling the blanket over her shoulder.

Was she doing this on purpose? Li spoke a little louder. Without the credits from my job, we can’t keep you on. I have to ask you to leave. I’m-I’m sorry.

Tai-Tai didn’t move, but her body tensed. Having begun, Li rushed on, recounting what happened at the Battery, filling the amah’s silence with words. By the time she finished the old woman was sobbing, her shoulders shuddering under the thin blanket.

Please . . . Li said, you must understand . . .

Tai-Tai said nothing but continued to cry, her face averted.

Li bit her lip, wondering what to do. Gently, she put a hand on her shoulder. Tai-Tai, she said.

The old woman yanked herself away. Get away from me! she spat. You’re a fool! Do you know that? A stupid, bloody fool! Standing now, Tai-Tai hurled abuse at her.

Li was lazy. She didn’t know anything. Only an idiot lost their position at the Battery. She couldn’t even look after her own baby.

Out of the corner of her eye, Li could see Min and Zhu awake now, knees clasped to their chests, eyes like saucers. Frightened, Zhu began to wail.

Li forced herself to stay calm. You can stay until you find a position, of course, but we can’t . . . Li’s voice trailed off. Feed you, she was going to say.

Tai-Tai’s answer was to push past Li and grab the small, thin mattress. Li bit her lip. Although the amah had been sleeping on it for years, it belonged to the trailer. They needed the mattress now they had Balmoral, and Zhu was getting too big to share with Min. The old woman dragged it towards the door. Li said nothing. If Tai-Tai didn’t find a position, she would be sleeping on the ground. Li shuddered to think of the cold, of the filth, of the Churin air.

How long would Tai-Tai last on the streets?

The amah cursed them all again and slammed the door on fourteen years.

Trembling, Li lowered herself onto a chair. The birth, the sleepless night, the long shift of the day before, all closed in on her at once. Min picked up an old dishcloth and mopped up the spots of blood that dotted the trailer floor. Li’s stitches had come loose but although she was in pain, she let Zhu, clamber on to her lap. She stroked his hair until the crying became a snivel.

A key scraped in the lock, and Li tensed, half expecting the old amah. Instead, Angua stepped through the door, a tired looking Fen trailing behind him.

They told me you were in Triage, he said excitedly. I went there after the shift, but of course you had gone.

I got back last night. Between shifts.

Her husband’s eyes darted around the room before alighting on the baking tray. There she is, my little girl. He leaned over. Oh . . . she’s so tiny.

As if aware of his presence, Balmoral stirred. Angua reached in to pick her up.

Wash first, Li said.

Her husband was filthy with oil and debris, the trademarks of the machinist. Complaining good humouredly about Li’s fussiness, he went over to the sink. Li noticed that her eldest daughter, Fen, had collapsed on her mattress to sleep. She didn’t even bother to look at her new sister. To her, the baby was just another mouth to feed, more shifts to put in. She was doing a double this weekend, and her next shift, like Angua’s, began in six hours.

While Angua washed, Li put Zhu in the corner, and pulled out the small breakfast table. Stepping around her husband, she clumsily filled the battered kettle, then lit their tiny kitchen stove and proceeded to make the tea.

When Angua was clean, or cleaner, he picked up Balmoral. My little Hu, he said, his eyes sparkling. Yes, yes, she’ll do, she’ll do. Look at that scowl!

She was born with it, Li said, infected by her husband’s good humour.

Ha! Ha! Yes! I can see that! Angua sipped the tea with one hand, balancing the baby across his knees with the other.

Li didn’t have the courage to say that their child’s legal name was Balmoral, and not Hu, the name they had both decided on if it was a girl, or that she wouldn’t even carry their last name.

She couldn’t hide it from him either.

Angua would know as soon as the child was old enough for iNet and then her name would appear in her identikit, a tiny, semi-transparent stencil in the top left of the lens whenever you looked directly at her, hovering and ghostlike. Perhaps they could still call her Hu, just between themselves. Although somehow, she knew that wouldn’t work, not when to iNet and to the Faith and to the world, she would be Balmoral Murraine.

Li poured her husband more tea, but this time her grip faltered, and she missed the mug.

Where’s Tai-Tai? he said, watching the tea drip onto the floor.

I . . . I dismissed her.

What?

Li told Angua what happened at the Battery, but unlike with Tai-Tai, she did not leave out her shame and humiliation. As Li spoke, she couldn’t help the tears. Angua’s face turned ashen. Slowly, he laid the baby in the baking tray, the expression of one who having seen the price, decided to put the item back on the shelf.

We’ll be all right, Li said. There’s no need to pay for Mamfac, I’ll nurse her myself. And Min will soon be old enough to apprentice, and then . . . this one, she almost said Balmoral, will apprentice after that. There will be a few lean years, but we’ll manage, we’ll be okay.

Only with a mountain of ten-nineties, he said flatly.

Ten-nineties was Battery speak. The Battery divided the year into ten week cycles. A ten-ninety was an overtime allocation; ninety hours a week, ten weeks in a row.

We’ll manage, she said again, knowing how hollow she sounded. The ten-nineties, for him and Fen, not her.

What about Zhu? Angua said.

Hearing his name, he poddled over to them. Zhu! Zhu! he crooned, his pudgy belly puffed right out, as though he knew, even at two and a half, that he was destined to be an Aspirant. Li lifted him onto her knee.

No, she said. Not Zhu. She crossed her arms over the boy’s chest. Over my dead body, no.

Angua glowered and she thought they were about to fight, to have the argument; the same one they had been having since Zhu was born and her avatar confirmed that he should be an Aspirant. Li would give up anything but that dream. Angua knew that.

What about Mamfac? he said.

I told you, we don’t need Mamfac, I will nurse her. Hadn’t he been listening?

"I wasn’t talking about nursing her," he said in the same flat voice.

Only then, did she realise what he was asking. You . . . you can’t be serious.

Even with ten-nineties, with just two of us working you know we can’t afford an Aspirant. Angua’s eyes were suddenly cold.

She would give up anything for Zhu, but her body? Mamfac employed nursing mothers. Pumped full of chemicals to stimulate lactation and strapped into a special feeding station, they would feed forty-eight infants during the eight hour shifts; twenty minutes per child, one on each nipple. It was how other mothers were able to work, checking the child into Mamfac on the way to the shift, picking them up sixteen hours later. Like the Battery, it was a twenty-four hour operation.

Li knew mothers who had signed up as a last resort to make ends meet. A typical contract was six months, longer if they could stand it, but the women returned from Mamfac destroyed, their health shot by the chemicals and painkillers, their breasts so sensitive they couldn’t bear to have them touched.

The credits were terrible, but it was an income, on par with lower grade Battery work. If she took the job, she could still take care of the home. She would leave Zhu and Min to themselves in the morning and have Balmoral at Mamfac. They wouldn’t fall into chronic debt, Fen and Angua might not have to work double shifts every week for the next three years, and Zhu, Zhu would remain an Aspirant.

Well? Angua said.

I’ll do it.

Good, he said. His voice was still flat, but his hand shook with anger, not at her, she knew, but at the world in which they lived. If only he participated in the Faith he would be comforted and accept their hardships. He would understand that this life was just a journey into the next. The words of her avatar came to her; the words she reflected on in her daily devotions.

Do not dwell on what you cannot change, but remain steadfast under trial. The soul is enriched by worldly pain, and follows the path to eternal life.

Zhu squirmed on her knees. Hungry, he whined. Hungry!

I’ll make the skaatch, Li said wearily.

She put him down and gingerly stood up. She opened the cupboard, took out a small slab of skaatch from the tin and, balancing it across her wrist, managed to lower the jellied square into the pan. She fried it in a few drops of seed oil, holding it over the carbon heater. The salt was awkward for her fingers and she dropped in too much. When the skaatch was brown and crispy, she carefully nudged it out of the pan and onto a large plate. Burning oil spat onto her wrists, but she smothered the cry by biting her lip.

At the table, Min took up the knife and began to cut.

I can do it, Li said.

No, please, I want to.

Min cut three slices for her parents and older sister, two small pieces for herself and Zhu. There was no more than five or six bites each, but the miracle of skaatch was that nobody ever wanted more. It was as filling as it was unappetizing.

The meal complete, Li asked them to join hands and thank the Faith for their sustenance. Zhu and Min took a wrist each. Angua refused to recite the words, but bowed his head. Like Li, he had lived through a darker time than this, when only flies, cockroaches and rats had enough to eat. Even if he didn’t find comfort in the Faith, he knew there was much to be thankful for despite their hardships.

After breakfast, Angua pushed the table to one side and pulled out his mattress. Li dozed fitfully while Zhu roamed around the room, wrapped up in some game on iNet, waking her every now and then with a misplaced step or the need to go to the dunny hole.

Four hours later, Li roused herself